Methods for structuring a bitstream for binary multimedia descriptions use a textural representation of the description structures for the description of audio-visual data content in multimedia environments (for example, as described in MPEG-7 overview (version 3.0), ISO/IEC ITC1/SC29/WG11 N3445 Geneva, May/June 2000, pages 1 to 53). For this task a so-called description definition language (DLL) is used, which is derived from the Extensible Markup Language (XML). An MPEG-7 description consists of descriptors (D) or description schemes (DS), where the number of description elements can be variable. In the MPEG input document M6061 (from the Geneva meeting), a binary format for the MPEG-7 data has been proposed, which allows a more compact encoding of description structures and thus savings in storage capacity and/or transmission bandwidth. However, it is noted that in these methods, there are no specifications as to which positions in a bitstream binary identifiers (BIDs) representing opening and closing tags of a multimedia description are placed. Therefore, a binary parser has to check each possible position of a bitstream sequentially, until a respective BID is found.